Celestial Dreams by Marie Summers

Moonbeams creamy as pie
Racing across the night
On a journey into the sky
Dreams seeking celestial light

Racing across the night
Past Venus waking from sleep
Dreams seeking celestial light
Cast into the dark so deep

Past Venus waking from sleep
To Saturn's expanding rings
Cast into the dark so deep
Catching a ride on angel's wings

To Saturn's expanding rings
On a journey into the sky
Catching a ride on angel's wings
Moonbeams creamy as pie


This is a Pantoum poem, consisting of quatrains with the rhyme scheme ABAB. Each quatrain introduces a new second rhyme (BCBC, CDCD). It describes a fantastical journey of a moonbeam that "Travels" across the solar system. The moonbeam passes Venus, Saturn, and beyond. Also, there seems to be a purposely made sense of confusion, through the use of patterned but apparently spontaneous repetitions. This of course helps to create the sense of majesty and mystique of the Universe.

There is extensive use of literary devices in this poem. Firstly, there is personification, such as “moonbeams…racing across the night,” and “past Venus waking from sleep.” As mentioned before, there is a lot of repetition. The structure appears to be random, but the lines that do repeat does so on the third line after it first appears. For example, “Racing across the night” appears on line 2, and then again 3 lines later. The first repeats at the last line.